To represent the orthography of the spoken languages, sign languages typically resort to the manual alphabet (PHONOLOGY 1.1.3), commonly known as fingerspelling. The first manual alphabet used in Italy was invented by the clergyman Ottavio Assarotti in Genoa at the beginning of the 19th century. In this alphabet, some letters were realised with the dominant hand only, others required both hands. Moreover, some letters were articulated on body locations, such as on the mouth or close to the eye, while others were produced in the neutral space. This alphabet was used in several education programs for deaf pupils across the country. It even spread to hearing children who learnt it at school as a game and referred to it as alfabeto muto (‘mute alphabet’).
In the Seventies, young LIS signers started to use a different type of fingerspelling, influenced by the international manual alphabet (i.e. the manual alphabet adopted by the World Federation of the Deaf for use at its meetings and events). Even if a few letters were slightly modified from the international version, this new system as a whole can be considered a borrowing from foreign sign languages. The new manual alphabet quickly spread throughout the Italian signing community so much that nowadays most of the signers use it. Only some older signers still stick to the old manual alphabet. Differently from the old one, the new manual alphabet is entirely produced with the dominant hand and does not involve any body location. Because of these features, it is quicker and more efficient to use. The table below shows the new manual alphabet, currently used in Italy.
Table: The new manual alphabet used by the Italian signing community
Most of the letters are reproduced in a static way. A few letters, those accompanied by a yellow arrow in the table, are optionally produced with a movement: R can be articulated with a slight wrist rotation (from prone to supine) and S can be accompanied by a slight contralateral movement. These optional movements usually disappear in fully fingerspelled words. The letters represented with a red arrow must display movement: G requires wrist pivoting (from radial to ulnar), J requires wrist rotation (from prone to supine), and Z must be articulated with a zig-zagging motion resembling the shape of the letter.
When used in signed interaction, fingerspelling clearly represents a form of borrowing from spoken languages. It enters the non-native lexicon of LIS in different ways, described below.
First, there are few short words that are systematically conveyed by fingerspelling. Letters are joint by a short path movement and the borrowing, as a whole, is a form of lexicalisation. Two common examples are the sign o-k, which is borrowed from written English, and n-o, a negative sign typically used to express prohibition.
a. o-k
b. n-o
As shown in (b) above, letters could be slightly modified in handshape and orientation for ease of articulation.
Second, LIS signers may resort to one-by-one fingerspelling, which consists in reproducing each letter of a word with the corresponding fingerspelled form. Letters are reproduced one after the other in a certain location of the signing space, namely in the ipsilateral side at chin level. In the example below, the proper noun Federico is reproduced by full fingerspelling.
f-e-d-e-r-i-c-o
One-by-one fingerspelling is employed to express concepts that do not have a corresponding sign in LIS (or one is not known). This strategy is mostly, but not exclusively, used with proper nouns referring to individuals, toponyms, brand names, and neologisms (LEXICON 3.1.2).
After a word is provided with one-by-one fingerspelling, it can be repeated in the discourse by producing a so-called single-letter sign: this form, articulated in the neutral space, selects the handshape associated with the first letter and combines it with a default motion, be it a short circular movement or a repeated horizontal movement. Single-letter signs represent an economic strategy since they are quicker than fully fingerspelled forms. In the example below, we can see how this process applies to the proper noun Federico, previously introduced with one-by-one fingerspelling.
federico
It is important to highlight that single-letter signs are limited to particular discourse contexts and are not conventionalized in LIS lexicon. For these reasons, this linguistic phenomenon is sometimes referred to as local lexicalisation. In order to be intelligible, single-letter signs are accompanied by full mouthing (LEXICON 2.2.3.1).
Another way to integrate fingerspelling in signed discourse is initialisation. This phenomenon occurs when the handshape of a sign represents the first letter of the corresponding spoken word. Differently from single-letter signs, initialised signs are conventionalised signs characterised by a defined movement and a defined location. An example of initialised sign in LIS is law. As shown in the figure below, the dominant hand is articulated with handshape L corresponding to the first letter of the corresponding Italian word (legge, ‘law’) on the non-dominant hand.
law
For more details on initialisation, the reader is referred to LEXICON 2.2.2.1.
In some cases, more than one letter from the corresponding spoken word is selected. These are known as multiple-letter signs. To illustrate, the toponym bari is articulated with two different handshapes: B followed by I, the first and the last letters of the corresponding spoken word.
bari
Various subtypes of multiple-letter signs are found in LIS. For more details, the reader is referred to LEXICON 2.2.2.2.
The last type of borrowed form involving fingerspelling is a complex form in which fingerspelling is followed by a lexical sign. This combination can be observed in the sign for the Italian region Lombardy: it is composed by the first letter of the corresponding spoken word (Lombardia) and the sign area articulated in the vertical plane.
L^area
‘Lombardy’
This type of sign formation is quite productive in the category of Italian regions.